Microsoft slams coffin lid on Vista

Service pack-free OS life support switched off as few mourn passing

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Microsoft has killed support for its unloved Windows Vista operating system today.

The company announced in February that the service pack-free version of its post-XP, pre-Windows 7 OS would hit end of life support in April.

This means that from today, the OS which hit manufacturers in late 2006 is left entirely at the mercy of hackers who might wish to exploit the now unsupported code.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft isn't switching off the security updates light on its much more popular, aged operating systems - Windows XP SP2, as well as all version of Windows 2000 - until July this year.

"In the event that you encounter an issue/outage in your environment on an unsupported product, our engineers may not be able to help resolve this until you have upgraded to a supported level," said Microsoft's Eric Ligman on the company's SMB community blog.

He added that customers should install Vista Service Pack 2 at a "bare minimum", but also took the opportunity to give a sales pitch on Windows 7, by suggesting punters should consider shelling out some cash for an upgrade to Microsoft's latest operating system. ®